and incapacity, yet they use these expressions to deny things for which people would declare them disbelievers if they understood what was meant. This is found in the statements of their leading authorities, to the point that even their followers turn away from those passages. As for scriptural expressions, they profess acceptance of them as they understand them, while distorting them into meanings far removed from their import and sense. If this is their condition, how can they fittingly criticize those who affirm the divine attributes over a few ambiguous expressions, if they agree with them in one of their two senses but not the other—even though these expressions are not scriptural?

Eleventh point: His statement: “They apply the term ‘body’ to Allah Most High, but say, ‘We do not mean that He, Most High, is composed of parts and compounded of components. Rather, we mean that He, Most High, is independent of a substratum and self-subsistent.’ On this understanding, the dispute over whether or not He, Most High, is a body becomes merely verbal.”

He should be told: The views of these people—whether they affirm parts or deny this—have already been recounted. The disagreement with both groups is not merely verbal. Rather, these people say that He is above the Throne, and some of them say that He is in contact with it. Yet they also say that He is neither compounded nor composed, but is a body, just as the Kullābiyyah and the leading Ashʿarī authorities say that He is above the Throne and say that He is not